"When even the head of the central bank cannot afford rent, what can public servants or minimum wage earners do?" Turkish citizens ask on social media.
So says Hafize Gaye Erkan, the new head of Turkey's central bank who, in an interview with Turkish media, slammed Istanbul's skyrocketing rent prices.
Many Turks have taken to social media, seemingly incredulous that even the 44-year-old governor, who previously worked at financial firms including Goldman Sachs and First Republic Bank, cannot afford her rent.
Unfortunately, it's not a new issue: Sema Dumanli, associate professor at Turkey's top-ranking Bogazici University, highlighted the problem more than a year ago by sharing the rental price of a flat in Istanbul (€1,094) and her payslip (€897) on social media.
"Turkey has no choice but to return to a rational basis," the country's Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said at a handover ceremony with his predecessor Nureddin Nebati in early June.
"Transparency, consistency, predictability and compliance with international norms will be our basic principles in achieving the goal of raising social welfare", he added, signalling an intention to move away from the government's previous volatile strategies.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had long argued that lowering interest rates helped fight inflation, in direct contrast to mainstream expert views.
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